Arctic Rhetoric and Inuit Sovereignty

Arctic Rhetoric and Inuit Sovereignty by Tad Lemieux A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2019, Tad Lemieux !"#$%&'$( By all accounts the world is in a time of monumental change wherein myriad crises and revolutions—social, financial, technological, geological—appear in the guise of the future. These stresses to global habitability, promised by data and early signs, appear now most clearly in the guise of the future. The Arctic has long been the great citadel of the future, whether of finance and nation state nomos, the transcendent border and passage of the North, or in the extraction of what waits there. Climate-related change and the Arctic are linked together by these threats to habitability, thus to the very being of being on Earth. What happens to the Arctic, we’re told, happens to us all. If today “Arctic rhetoric” refers to geopolitical disputation situated in the nation-state, taking the Arctic as its object, a worldly rhetoric returns it back into an intensive and immanent rhythm of sharing in relation. What, then, is Arctic rhetoric today? This dissertation answers to this question by reconsidering their constitutive terms at the intersection of shared finite relation and the world. But rather than extract Arctic rhetoric from “inside,” I trace the approach of these contemporary theories of rhetorical motion and ontology in the Inuit Nunangat. What we find waiting is a theory of granting—of sovereignty—that moves intensively and all throughout the discursive and non-discursive matters of worldly rhetoric. Taking these insights seriously means there must be an encounter with those living ones there now in the Arctic. Thus, I stage these material rhetorics alongside Inuit philosophy, in the context of these radical changes atmosphere and technology, and find an Arctic rhetoric that names itself. ii My argument follows three tracks of social, technological, and bodily change in these contexts. First, I consider Inuit and Greenpeace activist response to a proposed seismic survey in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait in the frame of the “end of the Arctic.” I ask what material rhetoric can tell us about this engagement with the terms of sovereignty. By considering changes to the Arctic climate as the rhetorical text for “the end of the Arctic,” this chapter emerges a shared finitude that encounters the terms of “Inuit” and “sovereignty.” Second, the body of the living seal is approached as a rhetorical tissue, confronted by the Inuit-led #sealfie movement on social media to undermine global anti- seal efforts. While Inuit reaffirmed their claim—economic and existential—to the body of the seal, a worldly rhetoric at the end of the Arctic returns the living seal in the question of finitude. Third, I consider the Nunavut Code Club and the imagination of Inuit coders in the context of resource-extractive futures and virtual lifetimes. I ask: what grants this future of interconnectivity? Finally, through a reading of our shared finitude, I reconstruct Arctic rhetoric within the history of the planetary change turning back, finally, to the living ones there now. iii !"#$%&'()*+),)%-./0 What does an “acknowledgements section” give to the content of which it finds itself a part? We know there’s a formality and—is it a grace? Either way, to acknowledge is to perform the acknowledgment, “the acknowledgement,” as the coming before, the vouching and reinforcement in the time before beginning of what is and calls for acknowledgement. This text, so it stands, for the acknowledgement. But in my own experience, when I open a book or when I download it, I expect to see “the acknowledgements,” and I expect to pass over them. We know what they are and what they do and why, and we know that everything comes from somewhere and something, and we know that others know. As writing, often passed over, “the acknowledgements” is also a genre within a genre, so often strange to the relation of the text, as though the author were trying to imagine themselves apart from their object just long enough to give what was expected. As a genre it demands a language and form, and it certainly expects an ethos, and the time to give “acknowledgements”—for the moments where one emerges finally, recognizably, in expectation to the genre and for the acknowledged, have waited for you to see this, to have been recognized, “by me.” The expectation is what precedes us as the writing, as the genre, as the gesture, turned to they who find themselves named by it. And if this expectation of and in the genre encounters, maybe impersonally, the time that those relations with others emerge in “acknowledgement,” then the acknowledgement is also the vulnerability of being recognized in time—just in time. As “the acknowledgement” is a genre preceding the task of the language that it follows, it testifies to following itself by demonstration, admission, and retrospect. So it is that “the acknowledgement” mirrors iv itself, like a mirror before a mirror, reflecting—what? Is it the acknowledgement of “the acknowledgement”? Maybe this is why it’s so often that only the acknowledged read the acknowledgements, because there is the end of the waiting for the finding what was already where it was supposed to be. If “acknowledgements” are here because they are expected to be here, then it is also “the acknowledgement” before language. The task is no less than to recognize recognition and to return to it just in time. Years later now, writing this, I’m finding first the expectation. All the same, so I find it. “In the light of this,” I will try to say what can’t be said. How does “the acknowledgement” find itself a part of what follows? The dissertation that follows is the outcome of many processes and events. (In 2015, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship funded this project, with my thanks.) It’s common today to read and to hear that things are bad in general and getting worse, and that the fruit of what intends from doing something like this, at a time like now, is withering if it has not already fallen from the vine. So one of the processes of this dissertation, in that light, is significant debt. The “acknowledgements” should acknowledge a debt, and I believe this is true in the extreme. Our acknowledgements today should “acknowledge” that process, which, like “acknowledgements,” is expected to be there. But now I’ll say this, in light of the form of thanks or gratitude. Jankélévitch thought that forgiveness whispered in a quiet voice, because, like finitude, it never really seems be there, and yet, isn’t it always? How we grasp this whisper is one of our great questions. Maybe the acknowledgement is like that too. Let me share this. For a long time I have been a solitary man, solitary but not unaccompanied, not alone. But solitude is always a risk. So for many years now, while I was writing this dissertation, I have mostly v been able to decide on when to go to sleep and when to wake up. In that time, in that ability to make the decision, I have been able to linger in the morning light through the window, and I remember the breeze so often rolling through the curtains, and the sound of footsteps outside, and laughter, and also in the night, maybe too often illuminated by a screen or two, laying in warm comfort with the sound of breathing, in a quiet gentle companionship. What this text “acknowledges,” what it has meant is a long time of an abiding touch. I have had the time to hold and to touch a little cat that I have lived with, for her to see me often and to know me and remember my rhythms, and she has often nestled and gathered with me in warmth and comfort. And I’ve so often held close in touch to the person I share part of my life with, and have been touched, and for that touch to endure and stay. That touch has nourished this dissertation as a quiet whisper, and with it my life, which will sustain and has been sustained. There is no debt or acknowledgement that can withdraw from that. And, Matt, my oldest friend, with whom I lived many lives, who taught me to play guitar, who made me a guitar that will always follow me with a secret letter he wrote behind the body, that I found, who now has a little daughter named Poppy, and who lives just in the way we dreamed about when we were younger together. And Matty F, who I still think about, do you remember the kitchen table, the music, and the laughing? It’s here too. Jon is also here, who taught me a lot about trees, and who is now with little Ash where he belongs. ! vi I still remember the long conversations with Mrinalini Greedharry, who was and is my first teacher. And Bruce Dadey, who introduced me to rhetoric long ago. Jennifer Henderson and Barbara Leckie, both of whom fought for me, I wonder if they remember, and who, in some way, trusted me. Their concern and care, their intelligence and impact, is here, and brought me here. And Sarah Brouillette, who I only wish I talked to more often, who has taught me more than most, even while I have been remote, and who always agreed to be there anyway, who actually cares.

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